Bruce: Bayou Bucks on the Move

Rut Reporter Eric Bruce has been writing about hunting and fishing for newspapers and magazines for 25 years and hunts deer all over the South, including near his Georgia home. States covered: AR, LA, MS, AL, GA, SC, FL.

Jan. 10: Louisiana hunters have good reason to rejoice. Not only did their LSU Tigers win the Cotton Bowl over Texas A&M, but the whitetail rut is on in the Bayou State and the bucks are active.

January is rut time not only in Louisiana, but Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of Florida and Arkansas are seeing rutting bucks during this first month of 2011. Reports are coming in of great bucks being seen and killed in the mid-South states.

Ken Bordelon of Vick, LA killed a whopper whitetail in the Avoyelles Parish on January 3. The giant non-typical green-scored 242 inches and was nailed in a food plot.

Hunting at Thistlewaite WMA, Chris LeBleu scored on an 18-inch wide eleven-pointer (above). The hunter saw the buck along the road before dawn and sneaked in that afternoon and shot the 220 pound bruiser. Thistlewaite is an 11,000 acre WMA in St. Landry Parish. There is a report about a huge buck with a split G2 killed on the Red River WMA.

Other hunters are seeing rutting activity and sign and many are also seeing and bagging good bucks. This is the time to be out in the woods as much as you can because anything can happen. Good areas to hunt include travel corridors, ridges, creek bottoms, or anywhere that would funnel deer movements. Posting over large open areas is a good choice to cover the most terrain.